Enigmatic Wilson
Buehrig, Edward H.
Enigmatic Wilson Woodrow Wilson, by Arthur Walworth. 2 volumes. Longmans, Green. $15. Reviewed by Edward H. Buehrig The concluding paragraphs of this biography are singularly appropriate. The...
...because it will surely come, it will not tarry...
...This outlook chastened his evangelism...
...The prophet has always been an ambiguous figure in history...
...Yet in Wilson's view Providence was leading man not from without but from within, for, as Walworth says of him at the Peace Conference, "He was haunted by a mystical, irrational faith that there was, deep down, a fine, intelligent strain of public opinion that the leaders were failing to cultivate...
...It was faith in the People that sent him forth in September, 1919, and it was this strenuous appeal to the country that precipitated physical collapse...
...In our time the People have become the great reservoir of authority, and Wilson was loath to believe that public opinion did not furnish an inspired guide to political action...
...Was the broken Wilson a pathetic or a tragic figure...
...Not only was this course urged by all the leaders in the League to Enforce Peace and by House and Sir Edward Grey, but as well by Wilson's new intimates at the White House, and even, Walworth reports, by Mrs...
...Present in Wilson's extraordinary personality were pride and intolerance...
...Walworth adopts the view, which has now become general, that in this matter Wilson must be counted among his own enemies...
...But as for the Senators on the Committee on Foreign Relations, his contempt "was too deep-seated to permit him to woo their good will...
...At Mobile, even before the stimulus of world war, Wilson said of the Nineteenth Century that it had brought mankind a long way on the "tedious climb that leads to the final uplands . . . We have breasted a considerable part of that climb and shall presently—it may be in a generation or two—come out upon those great heights where there shines unobstructed the light of the justice of God...
...Seeking to move events by intensity of emotional appeal, prophecy has seldom escaped frustration...
...Though sharply inconsistent with "regenerative preaching," Wilson throughout his life was an admiring student of Edmund Burke...
...and the prophet has variously been regarded as a noble or a pathetic figure, depending on one's own temperament and adopted viewpoint...
...This does not exculpate Lodge from the charge of personal animosity carried to the point of reckless disregard for the national interest...
...Rather the charge is applicable to Wilson too...
...The account is richly suggestive...
...It is a fact that in refusing to compromise Wilson rejected the advice of everyone...
...In Wilson we find not a prophet of doom but of salvation and, rarer still, of salvation not through supernatural intervention but through human processes in the here and now...
...The lofty hope of the prophet turned as ashes in the mouth...
...If we are to make the comparison, Lincoln was the more authentically tragic figure, and, in spite of Lincoln's lack of formal education (which Wilson, incidentally, disparaged), he was the more profoundly philosophical, capable of dealing with the paradoxical without committing patent inconsistencies...
...I am glad to report that in this biography, Colonel House receives the full credit that he so justly deserves and that was denied to him with such ill-humor by Ray Stannard Baker...
...True, as Walworth so often demonstrates, Wilson en famille was a warm, charming personality, high-spirited and affectionate...
...Those who would support the tragic view of Wilson's career, as I believe Walworth is inclined to do, must point up the many indications of a more realistic appreciation of politics than is evident in the public speeches...
...It is upon the validity of this faith, Walworth says, "that the measure of Woodrow Wilson's greatness depends...
...But most persuasive is the singular stubbornness with which Wilson refused to compromise with the Senate over the League Covenant...
...The former view is suggested by the unreality of his vision of justice consuming special interest—the "rainbow arch," Walworth aptly calls it, "far above the limited concepts of justice that were worshipped in the temples of nations...
...Granting this, however, one is still confronted by Wilson's inflexibility in dealing with people...
...That history could make a new start, prodded by evangelistic fervor, was most improbable...
...Particularly noteworthy is Walworth's account of Wilson and the peace, which, beginning with the Armistice negotiations, occupies most of the second volume...
...This emphasis, though at the expense of the neutrality and wartime periods, is justified both by the previous state of the literature and by the availability of sources hitherto unused...
...Romantic also was the reiterated faith in the capacity of public opinion instinctively to choose the general good above particular interest...
...The author found a fragment of paper containing in Wilson's hand a verse from Habakkuk: "The vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it...
Vol. 22 • September 1958 • No. 9
